


Solecism

by ThirtySixSaveFiles



Series: City of Blood [3]
Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: M/M, brief abduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8175241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirtySixSaveFiles/pseuds/ThirtySixSaveFiles
Summary: Solecism: noun, mistake, error, blunder.Or, Rhys starts to get the belated feeling he's stepped in something larger than he knew.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously thought this was going to be about half as long as it is. Also, it's a little different in tone than the previous two; depending on your tastes, this may be a good or a bad thing.

When the car pulls up to the curb next to him in flagrant violation of the “No Parking” stripes, Rhys thinks it’s Jack.

The car is sleek and black, with tinted windows, and while Jack prefers to walk when he can, he keeps a car and a driver for the longer distances across town. Rhys had been on his way to meet him; Jack had probably gotten impatient. So Rhys heads over, and it isn’t until the rear door opens and a large man Rhys has never seen gets out that Rhys realizes his mistake.

“Oh I’m sorry, I thought -” Rhys tries to back up but the man steps into Rhys’ space and grabs his arm in an unforgiving grip.

“Get in,” the man growls, turning Rhys bodily toward the open car door.

“What -  _ no,  _ what is this -”

“ _ Get in the car. _ ” The man twists Rhys’ arm and shoves down his head in a practiced maneuver, and before Rhys knows it he’s sprawling across the backseat as the door slams behind him. He scrambles upright and lunges for the handle, but the door refuses to budge. The man who put him here gets into the passenger seat and before Rhys can even open his mouth the car is in motion, pulling into traffic.

Rhys sits back slowly, uncurling his fingers from the handle. Neither the driver nor the other man look back at him.

“Who are you?” Rhys tries to repress the shaking in his voice and is almost successful.

He doesn’t get an answer.

“Where are you taking me?” Still nothing. Rhys is about to try again when the the driver presses a button on the console and a partition slides up, cutting Rhys off from his captors.

Rhys presses his hands together to stop their trembling and as he does, his jacket shifts and he feels the weight of his phone in his pocket, forgotten until that moment. Cursing himself for ten kinds of stupid, Rhys scrambles to pull it out - he can call Jack, and Jack will get him  _ out _ of this -

_ No signal _ . Rhys frowns at his phone in disbelief, and then out the window. They’re in the heart of the city, there should be plenty of reception. Anyway, ever since his arm was - since  _ that night _ he’s never lost signal, anywhere, even in the deepest concrete building. Rhys flexes his gloved right hand, remembering, and slowly puts the useless phone back in his pocket. It doesn’t look like he’s got a lot of options here, at least not until they get wherever they’re going. He leans back, resting his head against the back of the seat, and his eyes catch a glimpse of something out of place on the car ceiling.

It looks like a sigil, hexagonal and angular, inlaid into the roof of the interior with a burnished wire that looks like copper. It’s nothing Rhys recognizes. He lifts his left hand to it, tracing over the outlines with his fingers, and as he does his right arm twinges.

Rhys looks down at his right hand, then cautiously trades hands. He presses his gloved right hand to the sigil, and what feels like a bolt of static shoots down his arm. On a hunch he pulls the glove off and touches bare gunmetal fingers to the outline wired into the ceiling, and the metal  _ sparks _ , flashing for an instant with a silver-green light. Rhys jerks his hand back, but he doesn’t appear to be burned; he certainly doesn’t  _ feel _ hurt, and a quick inspection of his fingers doesn’t reveal any damage. When he glances back up at the ceiling, though, the shiny copper wire has dulled to an inert black.

Rhys is still trying to puzzle out what this means when the car slows and then stops, and then the rear door is opening and he’s being pulled out. He blinks as he emerges back into the city air, looking up at the alley they’ve stopped in. The men who brought him here are hustling him along, but if they were trying to disguise their destination they’ve done a poor job of it; just because they’re at a side entrance doesn’t mean Rhys doesn’t recognize City Hall when he sees it. Rhys is hurried up an emergency stairwell and down a suspiciously empty hallway, and it’s not entirely a surprise when they come to a set of double doors marked  _ Mayor. _

The secretary in the antechamber looks studiously disinterested as the men hustle Rhys past her toward an inner door that presumably leads to the Mayor himself. Rhys’ right arm twinges as he’s pulled through the doorway, and as he looks up he catches sight of the same sigil he saw in the car etched into the doorframe over his head. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, though, before he’s pushed down into a chair before a huge oak desk, with a slightly overweight man Rhys recognizes from official photo ops sitting behind it.

“Rhys, isn’t it?” The Mayor sounds like he’s not really asking, so Rhys doesn’t bother answering. The Mayor smiles with patent insincerity. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve brought you here.”

Rhys remains silent.

This seems to throw the Mayor off of his script for a moment, but he recovers, laying his hands flat against the desk. “I understand you’ve recently run afoul of Handsome Jack - no, no need to deny it,” he says, raising a hand, even though Rhys hadn’t been about to. “It’s a hazard of living in this city, I’m afraid, and I recognize that you’ve come away a little worse for the wear.”

Rhys blinks at him, genuinely confused, until the Mayor huffs and nods toward Rhys’ right arm. “ _ That _ . It can’t be easy, losing a limb like that.” The Mayor leans forward, and Rhys frowns. “I can make all of that go away, though. I have access to -” here the Mayor chuckles smugly “-  _ special  _ resources, and I can make you normal again.”

“All I ask,” the Mayor continues while Rhys is still processing that. “Is that you tell me  _ everything  _ you know about Handsome Jack Lawrence.”

Rhys looks down at his ungloved right hand and flexes it.

He doesn’t know what this new arm is  _ for _ , exactly, and if Jack has any guesses he’s been keeping them to himself. It moves just like his old one, but the sensation is dulled, to the point where he rarely feels it if someone touches him there when he’s not looking. It seems to be stronger than his old flesh-and-blood arm, and that coupled with the decreased sensation means that he had broken quite a few glasses before he had learned to gauge the pressure better. 

The exception, of course, is Jack. Jack’s touch on his new arm trails fire behind it, and pressure magnifies it. The first time Jack had taken one of Rhys’ new fingers into his mouth and  _ sucked _ , eyes hot on Rhys’ face, Rhys’ vision had nearly whited out.

Rhys also remembers, vividly, trying not to squirm despite the static shooting up his arm as Jack had held him still and carefully sliced into his forearm, carving a shallow line that Rhys couldn’t feel a couple of inches long to see what would happen. The answer turned out to be nothing - Rhys’ new arm appears to be bloodless, the insides the same gunmetal hues as the outside. A few seconds after Jack lifted the knife away the edges had pulled back toward each other, knitting together without a seam. Rhys’ heart had pounded in his chest as Jack smoothed a thumb over the unmarked surface, but Jack had just made a thoughtful noise and whatever he had taken from that, he hadn’t shared.

Rhys doesn’t know what this arm  _ is _ , but he knows that it connects him to Jack, and he’s not giving that up. Rhys looks at the Mayor across the desk and knows in his soul that he’s not sharing any of that.

Rhys is just opening his mouth to tell the Mayor where he can shove his offer when several things happen at once.

There’s a faint roaring, like a great wind or a train very far away, and the door to the office bangs open so hard the doorknob embeds itself into the wall. Handsome Jack strides through, hands in the pockets of his overcoat, calling over his shoulder to the secretary, “Nah, don’t get up, I’ve got the door.”

As Jack steps over the threshold to the inner office the sigil etched into the doorjamb flashes and then  _ bursts _ , showering Jack in a rain of glowing silver-green sparks. Jack pauses in surprise, looking up, and whatever he sees there doesn’t appear to make him happy because when he looks back down at the Mayor his smile has more teeth in it than any Rhys has ever seen.

“Well, well, Meredith,” he purrs, voice full of a murderous amiability. “You  _ have _ been busy.”

The Mayor reddens. “That’s  _ Mayor _ , to you, Lawrence,” he snaps, and Jack waves a hand as he makes his way to Rhys’ side.

“Sure, princess, whatever. Come on, kid, let’s go.” Jack’s hand is warm on Rhys’ shoulder, and it slides down to Rhys’ back as he slowly stands and turns to follow Jack out.

“We’re not done here,” the Mayor blusters, but he pales when Jack turns back.

“Oh no, Huxter, you are absolutely right about that,” Jack croons, and for a moment his words are overlaid with the echoes of a thousand other voices. The temperature in the room drops. “We are  _ not _ done. Don’t worry though - I’ll let your next of kin know when that happens.”

The rest of the blood drains out of the Mayor’s face and his hands are white against the desk, but no one in the room makes a move to stop Jack as he steers Rhys out of the office with a hand low on his back. Rhys is silent as they make their way out through the eerily empty building, and Jack doesn’t offer anything up, but his hand never leaves Rhys until they’re safely out on the streets. There’s a car waiting for them, Jack’s  _ real _ car, and Rhys waits until they’re both safely inside and merging into traffic before he asks.

It’s not  _ what was that about _ or  _ what’s going on  _ \- Rhys isn’t sure Jack will answer those - but there is one question Rhys does need the answer to.

“How did you know where I was?”

Jack drums his fingers on his thigh. “You were late,” he says, which isn’t what Rhys had asked at all.

“Yes, but -” Rhys only gets a few words out before Jack reaches over and takes Rhys’ right arm by the wrist. His fingers exert only the barest pressure, but Rhys still gasps as sensation shoots up his arm as Jack lifts his hand and turns it over. Jack presses a kiss to Rhys’ palm, eyes angled up to watch Rhys’ face, and Rhys has to bite his lip on the spark Jack’s lips call out of him and the look in Jack’s eyes.

“You were late,” Jack repeats, setting Rhys’ hand back down gently. “I always know where to find you,” he says, dragging his fingers over the sensitive - Rhys supposes it’s not really  _ skin _ anymore, but he still shudders. Jack leans back and looks out the window at the city passing by, and Rhys covers his wrist with his other hand.

It’s not the same.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at [ThirtySixSaveFiles](http://thirtysixsavefiles.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


End file.
